


The Girl Who Didn't Make Sense

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:16:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River Song didn’t like to discuss her past before SHIELD.  That didn’t stop Clint and Coulson from picking up clues here and there.  But it seemed like the more they learned about River Song, the less sense she made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Who Didn't Make Sense

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of vignettes which take place from 2005-2009 and can be read concurrently with a similar set of vignettes, _Don't Travel Alone_ , which will be posted next week. Some vignettes will be spun off into their own full-length fics.
> 
> Again, massive thanks to **like_a_raven** for her amazing betaing skills.

_October 2005  
One month after River Song’s recruitment_

The sound of a body hitting a sparring mat distracted Coulson from his paperwork, but only for half a second. That had been Clint. He could tell without even looking up.

There were some scuffles, and then the sound of two pairs of feet dancing across the mats. There was the sound of another body, lighter this time, hitting the mat, rolling, and bouncing back up. Song apparently liked to get back on her feet as quickly as possible, even if she had no bearings.

Up above, from the observation platform, Coulson kept half an ear on the sparring session as he worked on his reports. He needed to get back in the training rooms himself. To stay active in the field he had to pass evaluations like everyone else, but there was no time at the moment. He had a small mountain range of paperwork to deal with regarding his new probationary agent.

In the meantime, Clint could keep her busy. Song had been cleared by Medical to start physical training and the psychologists agreed that she was unlikely to violently snap, so Coulson had been reasonably comfortable about letting the two of them face off for a little sparring practice. Even if Song did try anything, there were plenty of people in the training room who would be able to intervene in the highly unlikely event that Clint couldn’t handle the situation himself.

Though, Coulson conceded, Song could probably give Clint a run for his money in the hand-to-hand department. 

Coulson didn’t know who had taught River Song to fight. She was still being very closed-mouthed about where and how she had received her training. But she seemed to have been taught three cardinal rules.

Fight dirty. Don’t pull your punches. Think in at least three different directions at once.

They could work with that.

The results of Song’s evaluations had been coming back to Coulson over the last couple of weeks. I.Q. tests. Psychological evaluations. Assessments in math, linguistics, physical condition, weapons proficiency, survival skills, hand-to-hand combat, technical skills. Coulson had half a dozen folders that he’d only had a chance to skim through, but the results were more than a little daunting. Good for SHIELD, but daunting.

Where the hell had this girl _come_ from?

Phil Coulson liked a puzzle. It was one of the reasons he enjoyed working in Intelligence. 

As puzzles went, River Song was the Gordian Knot. They just had to find a better way of solving her than the ancient myth did. Leaving her in pieces wouldn’t do anyone any favors. Coulson had decided that he was willing to put in however much time it would take to get the kid untangled.

He’d had to take a similar approach with Clint during his early days with SHIELD. Getting to know his agent, learning what made the younger man tick, building up trust—it had all taken time. Clint had tended to withdraw and deflect or outright snarl whenever Coulson had gotten too close to subjects he didn’t want to discuss. It had taken him months to start being more forthcoming, and even now, occasionally, Coulson learned something new about his friend.

River Song seemed to be a similar, if more extreme case. Coulson got the impression that the young woman had secrets buried so deep it would take an offshore drilling platform to reach them. Occasionally she’d offer up a bit of information, but if pressed would simply give him a level look and then do the equivalent of shutting and locking a door in his face.

It would be months before they got to anti-interrogation training, but when they did, Coulson would lay odds that she’d prove next to impossible to crack.

Two bodies hit the mat with a loud _smack_. Coulson looked down from the platform to see Song sitting on Clint’s back, her arm wrapped around his throat in a stranglehold. Clint was turning red in the face, but Coulson saw him impatiently wave off two other agents who were making moves to come pull the Reaper off of him. To tell the truth, Coulson wished that Clint were slightly less sanguine about his safety around River Song just given her record. Still, within a few seconds, he was able to reach around and toss her off. 

Coulson checked his watch.

“Okay, you two,” he called. “Ten minute break, then hit the track.”

He watched the two of them wander off to the sideline where their bottles of water were waiting. Song had deliberately placed hers as far from Clint’s as possible. She did that, Coulson had noticed. She kept her distance from people both physically and emotionally. That was not necessarily an uncommon character trait in covert agents, but one that Psych did not like to see go unchecked, especially in a new (and therefore largely unknown) recruit. The psychologists were mildly concerned, but acknowledged that it was early days yet.

Coulson smiled and shook his head slightly as Clint simply plopped down beside Song on the bench. Clint had apparently decided that Song needed a friend, and God knew no one else on the SHIELD base seemed eager to step up to that plate. He wasn’t too obnoxious about it. Coulson was sure that if he were, then Fury’s warning or no, Song would have broken something on his person by now. But he didn’t let her push him away too easily. And that, Coulson thought, might be exactly what she needed.

Even if it didn’t seem to be having any discernible effect yet.

Still, all told, Song was settling in at SHIELD better than Coulson had thought she would. She had fallen into the routine of pseudo-military strictures and order with something that almost looked like relief. Coulson had expected problems on that front. This was a person who had been, according to her, on her own since adolescence without even a wolf or two to raise her. He had expected her to chafe at the lack of complete freedom. 

Instead she was doing the opposite.

He’d said something to her about it last week. Song had just shrugged. “If you’ve lived on one military base, you’ve lived on them all. The routine is pretty much the same anywhere you go.”

“What military bases have you lived on?” he’d asked.

She’d just looked at him, and firmly closed that door.

So, yes, figuring River Song out was going to take a while. She was a puzzle. A spilled puzzle with an indeterminate number of pieces that were all the same color as the carpet and might or might not be capable of independent movement.

But that was all right, Phil thought.

They had time.

*****

_November 2005_  
 _Two months after River Song’s recruitment_  


Clint was the one who learned that, while River Song claimed not to subscribe to any sort of belief, she was not without a sense of altruism.

It was a pretty fucking scary sense of altruism, but she did have one.

They were still working on piecing together River’s background. As Coulson had patiently explained it, “We need to know who you might have crossed in the past to keep you—and anyone you work with—out of danger as much as we can now.”

River wasn’t being much of an active participant in this endeavor. She’d provided information on jobs she’d worked and clients she’d taken with pertinent facts and dates. Anything more personal, though, she had staked off as out of bounds. This included where she had come from, anything to do with her childhood, how she’d been left on her own as an adolescent, how she’d managed to fall into a career as a teenaged gun-for-hire, or how those weirdly-shaped cogs inside her head worked.

She seemed to have accepted the fact that SHIELD was going to try to dig up whatever they could on her, though, and adopted an attitude of boredom whenever new facts popped up that they asked her to verify.

“Do your computer geeks really have nothing better to do?” she asked when Clint caught up with her in the breezeway between the classroom building and the Administration Center. Her eyes went to the manila folder in his hand.

“Are you kidding?” he said, falling into step beside her. “The computer geeks live for this kind of stuff.”

Agent Moretti, one of the two analysts who had been assigned to sweep internet archives for pictures of the Reaper or any news stories that sounded like they might make mention of her work, had brought this one to Clint this morning. Normally it would have gone directly to Coulson, and the senior agent would have been the one to broach the topic with her, but Coulson was on a fact-finding trip in the UK at the moment and Clint was having a hard time putting off his curiosity.

“Besides,” he said, pulling a photograph out of the file, “I really have to ask.”

The picture was positively dated to August of 2002, when River had been fifteen. It had been taken in rural Diamond Bluff, Montana on the morning that the police had raided the Fellowship of Angels Ranch, headquarters of Abraham Zion.

Abraham Zion, also known by the more pedestrian name of Brian Porter, had been a cult leader who had gained some notoriety a few years back for everything from shady tax practices to his habit of “marrying” any underage girl on the compound who happened to catch his eye. Apparently he had even had new “wives” shipped in from smaller offshoot compounds in North Dakota, Wyoming, and Alberta, Canada. The rumors and accusations had made the news long before the police had been able to move in on him.

River stopped walking and took the picture from him. She glanced at it with an amused snort. “God, I looked like Laura Ingalls.”

She kind of did. The River Song in the picture was wearing an old-fashioned, flowered dress and her long hair was pulled into two braids. She was sitting on a low log fence in a row of other girls of similar age under the half-wary, half-worried watch of a pair of Montana state troopers. 

“According to the news story,” Clint said, “two days before the raid, a package of incriminating information turned up on the local sheriff’s doorstep. It was apparently stolen from the ranch files, but they never found out who did it or delivered it. The sheriff got right on the horn to the state police and the FBI.

“But it was the damnedest thing. When they raided the ranch that morning and went in to arrest Father Abraham, he was dead. Someone had killed him in his bed. Laid his throat open.”

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” River said, handing the picture back to him.

Clint put it back in the file, brow furrowed.

“Who hired you for that one?” he asked. 

Abraham Zion was a pathetic excuse for a human being, no doubt about that, but who would have hired an assassin to kill him? Especially an assassin who was as high-priced as the Reaper had been.

“No one hired me,” River said. Clint must have still looked confused, because she added, “It wasn’t a job.”

“Then why did you do it?” he asked.

The look that crossed her face for a moment was cold, slightly amused, and angry in a way that was like a bonfire compressed down to a pinpoint. It occurred to Clint that if he’d been on the receiving end of that look in that dark back alley in Sofia, he wouldn’t have thought twice about killing her.

“Because he pissed me off,” she said.

It was one of the few times in his life that Clint could remember being at a complete loss for words. Christ Almighty, she’d been _fifteen._

River clearly interpreted his silence as something else, because she huffed impatiently.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Brian Porter was a waste. He took something that people believed in, twisted it around, and used it to hurt them. Sure, a lot of them were weak-minded idiots who deserved what they got, but those girls didn’t. I was in a unique position to do something about it, so I did. The man deserved to die.”

Clint swallowed something down.

“Do I even want to know how you got close enough to kill him?”

“I highly doubt it,” she said and moved to walk on.

Forgetting all caution and common sense, Clint caught her by the arm. 

“The people who raised you? You know, the ones you ran away from and will never talk about? Were they like Porter? Did they hurt you? Is that why you went after him?”

The question seemed to hit her like a slap in the face. For two solid seconds he was sure she was going to haul off and slug him.

“The people who raised me were _good_ people,” she said with the kind of anger that couldn’t be anything but honest. “And they would _never_ \--”

River broke off, visibly wrestling her temper back under control. When she went on, she was more collected, though still clearly furious.

“Don’t try to discuss things you don’t understand, Barton. And while you’re at it,” she jerked her arm out of his grip, “you might want to see about getting that white knight complex removed before it lands you in serious trouble.”

She stalked off and he didn’t try to follow.

River was still only barely speaking to him two days later when Coulson got back from Scotland.

*****

_November 2005_  
 _Two months after River Song’s recruitment_  


The uniforms hadn’t changed.

Coulson watched a small crowd of teenage boys and girls pass by him as he waited on a bench in a dark-paneled foyer. All of them wore Kirkwood School’s black and royal blue. He saw a few of the kids cast curious looks in his direction, at this unfamiliar element in their small contained bubble. 

He owed Agent Moretti a nice bottle of that scotch she liked, or at least a note of commendation for her personnel file. She had drawn the task of taking their oldest known photograph of River Song, the one of her with a school group on a field trip to a museum in Edinburgh in April 2001, and trying to figure out where the students had come from.

Moretti had confirmed that the students were from a place called Kirkwood School. She had hacked the school’s database (a task she’d described as “terrifyingly easy”), pulled attendance records for the 2000 – 2001 school year and downloaded the information on all the girls who had been roughly the right age. After many hours of research and cross-referencing, Moretti had whittled down the girls’ names until she had found the one that was a ghost.

Sarah Campbell, aka River Song, aka the Reaper. 

Coulson had flown into Edinburgh the night before and driven up to the school that morning. Kirkwood was in a rural area outside of Perth. It was a pretty place. Peaceful. Pastoral, even. He had a hard time picturing Song here.

The more Coulson thought about River Song, the more knotted up his brain got. The girl simply did not add up.

She had to have come from _somewhere._ She hadn’t just sprung from the cabbage patch, as his grandmother used to say. But where? The “Amelia from Scotland” and “Rory from England” she’d talked about during their first interview either didn’t exist or were unfindable. Coulson had decided to put those names on the back burner for the time being, because they clearly hadn’t been the ones to raise her.

That left the question of who had. Whoever had had the care and keeping of River Song had done a thorough job of turning her into a weapon. She’d been taught how to fight and kill and infiltrate. There were organizations out there that took and trained children to be soldiers and spies. SHIELD had crossed paths with a few of them over the years and had seen the results of their programs. The operatives they produced were, almost without fail, hollowed-out shells filled with little more than ideological rhetoric and ruthless efficiency. 

It was the opinion of the SHIELD psychologists that River Song had not come from one of these programs. Five of them had reviewed her case. All of them noted that she showed signs of depression to some extent. Three thought that she displayed symptoms of PTSD. They all agreed, though, that she had not been subjected to brainwashing and that she did not show any of the classic signs of childhood abuse.

It was always possible that they were wrong, but SHIELD hired the best. Coulson was inclined to defer to their assessment until he had new intel or Song herself decided to be more forthcoming.

It did rather leave him back at square one, though. He hoped that maybe Kirkwood would shed a little light.

“Mr. Coulson?” 

Coulson quickly bookmarked his mental review and stood to shake the hand of a trim, middle-aged woman who had appeared in the reception area.

Dr. Diane McNeil, according to his research, had been headmistress of Kirkwood School for the last twelve years. By all accounts, she was beloved by her students, both present and former, and individually invested in each one. Coulson hoped that that would prove to be his advantage.

“Dr. McNeil. Thank you for taking time to meet with me today.”

“Not at all, Mr. Coulson. You’ve come a long way to talk to us. Would you care to step back to my office?”

In due course, Coulson found himself sitting at a round table in the Headmistress’s study having tea with Dr. McNeil and a Ms. Julie Ross, who had been “Sarah Campbell’s” house mother during her time at Kirkwood.

“You know, I’ve always wondered what became of Sarah,” Ms. Ross said. “So, she’s landed in New York, has she? Let me guess. Columbia?”

“Where else?” Coulson said. “Oh, you’ll be wanting this,” he added, taking a clipped sheaf of papers out of his briefcase and handing them across to Dr. McNeil. 

It was an official looking document that he’d had fabricated before he’d left New York. To all appearances it was a release of information form signed by Sarah Campbell, authorizing her former educators to answer questions about her. For good measure, he’d clipped a copy of Song’s SHIELD identification picture to it.

The one where she didn’t vaguely look like she wanted to murder the person on the other side of the camera.

“And what’s this program she’s applying for?” Dr. McNeil asked. “The reason for the background screen, I mean.”

“It’s a specialized course of study,” Coulson said easily. “It’s called the Barton Program. Essentially it’ll guarantee her a place with our organization once her education is successfully complete. We’re a government institution, though, so we’re required to do extensive screening of our candidates. It’s just policy. You understand.”

That was one of the first tricks Coulson had learned working for SHIELD. People would buy the biggest line of bullshit if you said that you worked for the government and that something was “just policy.” It didn’t even matter which government.

“It’s an excellent opportunity for her,” he added. “We think she could be a valuable addition.”

Dr. McNeil finished looking over the release papers, nodded, and folded her hands on top of them. “Well that doesn’t surprise me.” The woman smiled a bit. “Sarah was a bright girl.”

Sarah Campbell, according to Dr. McNeil and Ms. Ross, had been a good student. Her grades had been high, though not the highest in her year. Several of her teachers had felt that she wasn’t working up to her potential. She’d taken part in a handful activities. She’d played piano with one of the student musical ensembles and had been an all-around excellent athlete. She’d been generally well liked by the other students.

Coulson took notes as they talked. “So, Sarah never had any problems during her time here?” he asked.

He had no problem catching the look that passed between the two women.

“Well, no, not really,” the headmistress said. “Only…I don’t want you to think that Sarah was a disciplinary problem. Because she wasn’t. She was never a cut-up, and she didn’t set out to cause problems, but we did occasionally have issues with her.”

“I caught her out of bounds a few times at night,” Ms. Ross said. “And a couple of times she just up and went off into the village on her own. Of course, that’s not allowed for our Sixth Years, let alone for our Second Years.”

“We never did figure out how she managed to sneak off with no one the wiser,” Dr. McNeil added. “But that was Sarah for you. She was a bit too smart for her own good at times. And it wasn’t so much that she set out to break the rules. It’s more that I think she’d sometimes forget that the rules existed. It just wouldn’t occur to her that she had to get permission for some things. We encourage independence in our students, but Sarah rather took it to an extreme degree sometimes. Although I can’t say that that’s unusual for a child with her sort of family situation.”

Coulson sat up just a little bit straighter. He couldn’t have asked for a better opening. “Her family situation?”

“Well, her father was in the Foreign Service, as I’m sure you know. He traveled extensively, and Sarah’s mother always went with him. They didn’t bother with Sarah very much. In a year and a half, they never once set foot on campus. Not even on her first day.”

“Never?” Coulson asked. “You mean, you never met them in person?”

Dr. McNeil shook her head. “She arrived on her own. She left and came back from summer holiday on her own. The other breaks she spent here at school. Payments for her school fees and her pocket money were set up through a bank. They’d communicate with us mostly through email. I talked to Mrs. Campbell on the phone twice. They never contacted Sarah at all, as far as I could tell, and I don’t think I ever heard her mention them unless someone else brought up the subject. Sometimes it seemed like they didn’t exist at all.”

Ms. Ross confirmed this with a nod. 

“At any rate,” Dr. McNeil said, “you can see that sort of independent streak crop up in children from that sort of situation. They get so used to looking after themselves that they have a hard time letting others look after them and try to skirt around the rules that are there to keep them safe.”

Coulson nodded. He almost found himself feeling sorry for the fictional Sarah Campbell.

Hell, he was starting to feel a little sorry for River Song.

“But, aside from that, you’d say she was well adjusted?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” Ms. Ross said. “Except…” She looked a bit uncomfortable as Dr. McNeil raised her eyebrows questioningly at her. “Well, she had these horrible nightmares sometimes.”

“Nightmares?” Coulson asked.

Ms. Ross nodded. “Especially in the early days. She said that she’d been in an accident when she was a child and would dream about it when she was in a new place. They did get better and seemed to go away the longer she was here, but she scared the other girls half to death a couple of nights.”

He’d have to bring that up with the psychologists. Coulson flipped back to his first page of notes.

“Now, you said that she attended Kirkwood starting in September of 2000 and left in January of 2002. Is that correct?”

Dr. McNeil nodded. “Her parents pulled her out shortly after Christmas. That was the last we ever heard from her.”

After an hour or so, Coulson had gotten as much useful information as he thought he was going to. Dr. McNeil escorted him back to the entrance after the meeting, looking mildly amused as he stopped halfway down the corridor, made a show of fumbling at his pockets, apologized, and quickly back-tracked to the study for his cell phone.

Sarah Campbell’s student file was still on the table. It was an easy matter to hide it in his briefcase.

Still, in the end, Coulson felt as if he left Kirkwood with more questions than answers. 

Two days later, he was back at his desk on the SHIELD base and was just starting to dose his jet lag with a large cup of coffee when Clint turned up at his door carrying a file and wearing his _I think I fucked up_ expression.

From posing as a privileged boarding school student in Scotland to posing as a child bride in order to kill a cult leader in Montana. How was it that the more they learned about River Song, the less sense she made?

Clint finished reading the Kirkwood file and dropped it back on the desk with a heavy sigh, lacing his fingers over his head.

“Maybe aliens dropped her off.”

Coulson laughed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “That would make as much sense as anything,” he said.

Clint rocked his chair slightly. “I probably fucked up any chance we had of getting her to talk about Montana. I’m sorry about that.”

Coulson shook his head.

“That was more of an emotional reaction than anyone else has been able to get out of her. That can only be a good thing,” he said. “We’ll file it away with the rest. Though maybe,” Coulson added, “I should handle the heart-to-hearts for the foreseeable future. Just in case she’s near a sharp object next time.”

*****

_December 2005_  
 _Three months after River Song’s recruitment_  


Clint spotted River at her usual table in the mess hall, all the way in the back corner.

The mess hall on the base never really shut down. There were too many people working too many odd hours for it to keep to a strict breakfast-lunch-dinner schedule. Right now it was late, and the large room was sparsely populated. Clint saw a couple members of Security who had just come off shift, three doctors from Medical scarfing down a hasty dinner, and Agent Michaels from Counterintelligence who looked like he might have fallen asleep over a sandwich and coffee.

Clint had just gotten back from a quick mission down to Costa Rica. Well, it was supposed to have been quick—a milk run, really. But the extraction had taken a little longer than expected and the two days had stretched into five. Clint had cooled his heels in the safe house for the additional three days with nothing but some ancient MRE’s to pick at. Once he’d landed back at base, he’d stopped at his quarters just long enough to drop off his gear before heading to find something edible.

He carried his tray over to River’s table. She was bent over a workbook, writing diligently. A half-dozen spiral-bound books with the SHIELD logo on the covers were laid out neatly off to one side. A large mug of tea and a plate with a half-eaten English muffin on it rested at her elbow.

“Coulson’s got you learning the SHIELD protocols, huh?” Clint said, taking a seat at her table.

That had been his least favorite part of his probationary period, he remembered. Lots of dry reading, lots and lots of essay questions. 

River looked up. If she was at all surprised by his popping up, there was no sign. She straightened, rubbing a crick out of her neck.

“Seems like I’ll never be done sitting exams,” she said. “I have to say, SHIELD’s are especially sadistic.”

“Tell me about it.” Clint dismantled his chicken sandwich enough to pull the tomato out. By this time of day, it would have gone slimy. “I remember when I had to learn them, I offered to do extra miles if Coulson would let me beg off.”

“That must account for how you learned them so well,” River said dryly. She reached out and tapped one of the manuals. “The protocol on how to properly carry out a kill order is in here, if you were interested.”

“Not especially.” Clint grinned and pushed his plate over a little. “French fry?”

“No thanks.” 

River bent back over her work. Clint ate his dinner in silence and River finished off her tea and muffin. For all that she’d spent some time in a high-class boarding school, sometimes Clint noticed things that made him wonder if River hadn’t been brought up in more Spartan conditions. One thing that pinged his radar was the way she never wasted food. She took precisely what she needed, no more, and then finished it. The habit didn’t seem to hurt her any. In fact, she’d put on some much-needed weight since arriving at SHIELD, now that she wasn’t almost constantly on the run and on edge. 

He knew it was no use to ask her about it, though. 

After a while, River capped her pen and started to gather up her materials.

“Was it something I said?” Clint asked.

“It’s ten of ten,” she said, stacking up the manuals and shuffling through the sheets of loose leaf paper she’d been scribbling notes on. Some got neatly tucked into a binder. Others were balled up and dropped on her tray to go in the garbage. “I’m supposed to be on lockdown in my quarters at 2200 or face the wrath of Fury, remember?”

Clint had asked her before how she did that — always knew the time. She never looked at a clock or a watch. In fact, Clint had never seen her even wear a watch, but she always knew with unerring accuracy. Her enlightening reply had been, “I just do.” 

“You can be out of your quarters with an approved escort. I’m an approved escort. You can stay if you want.”

“Thanks,” she said, still sorting out her papers, “but I should get some sleep anyway. I’m due on the range early tomorrow morning.”

One of the loose sheets of paper caught his eye. Clint reached out and picked it up.

“Oh, hey. Wow.” He turned it upside down (or possibly right side up) and back again. “What’s this?”

It was a drawing which took up almost the entire page. At first glance it made Clint think of abstract clockwork gears, interconnected circles, and circles within circles, each one intricately designed. The longer he looked at it, though, the more he started to think of drawings of solar systems, crisscrossed by lines. And then there were odd shapes he couldn’t begin to classify.

River was stuffing the manuals into her backpack, and Clint saw her freeze for just a second before she finished gathering up the rest of her notes.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just a doodle. My brain needed a break from how to deal with getting arrested in a foreign country.”

“It’s cool.” Clint slid the paper across the table to her. River reached down to take it, paused, then slowly slid it back to him.

“Keep it if you want,” she said off-handedly, not looking at him. “Or toss it. Whatever.”

The drawing wound up tacked up to the bulletin board in his quarters.

It was interesting to look at, especially when he had reports he should be writing. Eventually, it just became a regular part of his quarters, just as River became a fixture in his life.

*****

_January 2006_  
 _Four months after River Song’s recruitment_  


It was some small comfort to Coulson that Song seemed to find him and Clint as puzzling as they found her.

He was in his office reviewing Clint’s preliminary report from Baska. There wasn’t much to it. He had only been there for thirty-six hours so far. This was an easy assignment, one that shouldn’t take more than a week. Honestly, there were other agents who could have handled it, but Coulson knew that Clint had been itching to get off base again.

Coulson’s senses gave a slight twitch and he looked up to find Song standing in the open doorway of his office. There had been no noise to indicate that she was approaching. One second she wasn’t there, the next second she was. People tended not to hear Song coming unless she wanted them to.

He frowned. It was 0945, which meant that Song should have been half an hour into a training session with Agent Dunn’s group. Yet here she was, and she looked…

Coulson had been about to note that she looked pissed about something. Her posture was rigid, her arms were crossed, and she was glaring at him. A follow-up observation made him reassess a bit. There was a pinched and worried look around her eyes and her stance was far less like someone about to go on the attack and more like that of someone who was expecting to be hit.

That made him set aside his first impulse, which was to tell her to table whatever the issue was and report directly to Agent Dunn with an abject apology for being late. Instead he turned away from his computer.

“Song? What can I do for you?” he asked.

For a second he thought she was going to turn around and leave. Then she squared her shoulders and Coulson saw resolve settle into her brown eyes.

“I want to know what you want,” she said.

Coulson raised his eyebrows. “Aside from for you to stick to your schedule?” When Song just pressed her lips into a thin line, Coulson sighed. “Come in, Song. Shut the door and sit down.”

She followed the first two instructions at least. Song parked herself behind one of the two chairs in front of his desk, hands gripping the back of it. 

“All right. What’s the problem?” Coulson asked.

Song gave him a look that indicated she suspected him of being mentally challenged. 

“My problem,” she said, “is that I’ve been playing along with this recruitment folderol for four months and I’m tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. So, just…” She raised her hands in frustration before clapping them onto the back of the chair again. “Get it out in the open. Tell me what the hell you want. Why am I still alive? What are you hoping to get out of keeping me around here?”

Coulson just stared at her for a moment. God, it was like Clint all over again, a scared-shitless kid hiding behind bravado. He’d had one eye on the Reaper and the other on the holes in River Song’s background. He could have kicked himself for missing this.

He found himself thinking the exact same thing he’d thought about Clint once: _Christ, kid, what the hell happened to you?_

“Song?” he said. “Sit. Down.”

This time she actually obeyed, sitting stiffly in the chair. Coulson folded his hands on his desk.

“First of all,” he said, “why are you so certain that we want anything from you?”

Song snorted in dry unamusement. “Because people always want something. It’s usually pretty easy to figure out what.”

She didn’t have to add the rest. Coulson could see it. _But this time is different and I don’t like it._

“Fine,” he said. “We want you to be an operative for SHIELD and we’re working to make that happen.”

“Come now, Agent Coulson.” She gave him a knowing look. “If you wanted a shiny new operative, there are much easier channels you could have gone through. Respectable channels.”

“Maybe,” Coulson acknowledged. “I’ll admit that bringing you in wasn’t the easy path, Song. But that was Agent Barton’s instinct, and I trust him.” He saw her expression waver the tiniest bit. “Let me ask you something, Song. In six years, do you know how many kill orders Barton has refused?”

“How would I know?” Song’s mask had quickly slipped back into place. “For all I know this is a biannual event for him.”

“One,” Coulson said. “Exactly one. You. And I’ve seen him eliminate targets with records far less colorful than yours and sleep very well at night.” 

River, Coulson noted, did not seem terribly reassured by that revelation.

“Barton thinks you belong here.” Coulson shrugged lightly. “I’m curious to see if he’s right.”

Song looked as if she was examining his response for a booby trap. “Why didn’t he kill me?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

“I have.”

“Then I’d suggest you listen to the answer.” Coulson sat back in his chair. “Is there anything else, Song?”

By her expression, there was a great deal more, but Song elected not to voice it. “No, sir.”

“Good.” Coulson checked his watch. “It’s too late for you to interrupt Agent Dunn’s session now, so you can spend the remaining time running laps. We’ll go over emergency extraction procedures after lunch.”

Song nodded curtly and left.

Once she was gone, Coulson rubbed at his suddenly aching head. 

It was days like this he wondered if they’d ever pick up all the pieces.

*****

_May 2006_  
 _Eight months after River Song’s recruitment_  


There were only so many ways to kill time on a long flight. 

Sleeping was popular, especially when returning to base after a completed mission. Coulson often wound up on the computer or reading through files, trying to stay a step or two ahead of whatever was coming down the SHIELD pike. They usually broke out books at some point. None of them had time to follow television shows and they made it to movies only occasionally. Books were easily portable, and could be set down and picked up again days later if that’s what necessity dictated. A lot of reading got done in the air.

Or they talked, about everything and nothing. Mostly that was Clint and Coulson. River listened, but thus far she hadn’t really been cajoled into taking part.

They were on their way back from Ecuador, and were talking about home towns. Coulson found himself doing most of the talking. Clint, he knew, didn’t ever really want to wax nostalgic about Waverly, Iowa. The senior agent thought that was the reason he liked to try to tease details out of Coulson about growing up in Pittsburgh.

Not that there was much to it that Coulson thought was that interesting. He hadn’t even really considered Pittsburgh to be home since college. His parents had both been gone by the time he’d graduated and he had no siblings. He did have a lot of extended family there that he periodically got back to visit, cousins he’d grown up with and their families. Mostly he was the enigmatic “Phillip who works for the government.” This past Christmas was the first time he’d gotten back for a visit in over two years. One of his younger cousins had gotten married, and since Coulson hadn’t been on assignment, he’d actually been able to attend.

“How about you?” Clint asked River, after Coulson finished telling about the time his grandmother’s stove had caught fire at Thanksgiving. “Where did you grow up?”

Coulson raised his eyebrows and glanced over at River, who had a seat by a window. He was curious to see how she would answer. Or if she would answer at all.

It looked as if she wasn’t going to. River just narrowed her eyes at Clint a bit and then turned her head to look at the clouds passing by outside.

“It was Scotland, right?” Clint pressed. 

It was an educated enough guess, taking into account what seemed to be River’s default accent (which she’d completely dropped since arriving at SHIELD) and her stint at Kirkwood School. Still, River had never come out and claimed any country as home.

River didn’t give any indication that she even heard the question. Clint glanced at Coulson and shrugged. Coulson pulled out his laptop. Clint thumbed his way to the scrap of paper marking his page in his book. The jet grew quiet again.

Twenty minutes later, River turned back and answered.

“Yes,” she said. “I grew up in Scotland.”

Clint picked the conversation right back up as if there hadn’t been any lag at all in the middle of it.

“Where in Scotland?” he asked.

That was the approach that Clint had seemingly decided to take. Push just a little more. Try to take one more step. Coulson watched curiously. Sometimes it just made her clam up. Other times he’d actually get a response.

This was apparently one of the other times.

“In the Highlands,” she said, turning to look back out the window. “Near the ocean.”

Clint nodded in satisfaction and turned back to his book, not pressing for any more. One step at a time.

One more puzzle piece in place.

*****

_January 2007_  
 _One year, four months after River Song’s recruitment_  


River had a weird thing about doctors. That was something that it took both Clint and Coulson a while to notice.

Ordinarily, River seemed perfectly fine around doctors. No one enjoyed going to Medical, of course, but she went through her evaluations and her regular physicals without a complaint. And SHIELD agents tended to need medical attention on a fairly routine basis. There was no such thing as a mission that wasn’t dangerous. Even training could be hazardous if someone hit too hard in sparring practice or footing became uncertain on the obstacle course.

When she was fully in control of herself, River never showed or expressed any apprehension about doctors at all. She was even somewhat friendly to Dr. Levine, who had handled most of her routine medical care on base since her arrival.

But there were a few times, when she was at less than full capacity, that Coulson and Clint got a glimpse of what must be a full-blown phobia that she kept under lock and key at all other times. The mission in Nevada was a prime example.

The people they’d gone in after had been cooking chemical weapons. During the course of cleaning out their headquarters, River had gotten caught in a cloud of white mist, courtesy of one employee’s Hail Mary escape attempt.

It could have been worse. A lot worse. The chemical had ended up just being a mild hallucinogenic. It wasn’t fun (for any of them), but together Coulson and Clint had been able to get River under control and calmed down enough to get her to the local hospital. The basic strategy had involved getting her pinned and letting her fight herself into exhaustion. They were all going to be sporting some impressive bruises from that one.

Still, all things considered, they’d gotten off easy. None of them had been badly hurt and, after a record-breaking blood work-up, the doctor was able to assure Coulson that the hallucinogen would work its way harmlessly out of River’s system in about twenty-four hours. 

The doctor had also heavily hinted that perhaps Coulson and Clint might want to take themselves elsewhere—a waiting room, the cafeteria, anywhere they might not be quite so underfoot and intimidating the hell out of the hospital staff. He had been met with a quiet wall of SHIELD resistance. This was a civilian hospital and in no way secure. The second team was still out rounding up a handful of the weapons manufacturers who had managed to escape the facility. Even had that not been the case, though, they weren’t leaving one of their own alone and unguarded.

In other words, he and Clint were staying right where they were.

Coulson went back into River’s room to share the prognosis with Clint, who had taken up a post sitting on the foot of River’s bed. River was curled up in a quiet ball under every spare blanket that they had been able to lay their hands on. The sedative she’d been given to ease the effects of the hallucinogenic was doing a number on her system. 

“She’s going to be okay,” Coulson said to Clint, who sat up at straight attention, dropping his hand from where he’d been resting it on the curve of River’s knee. “No permanent damage. She just needs to ride it out. The doctor says she’s going to be fine.”

What relief they had time to experience was rudely interrupted when River began to giggle.

That was just not a sound that River Song made. Not normally.

Clint and Coulson exchanged apprehensive looks, then leaned over to try to find her face in the sea of blankets, to see if she was even really awake.

She was, and was unexpectedly alert and looking directly at the two of them. The expression in her eyes was something between _Please make it stop_ and _Oh, you silly boys._

River stopped giggling, and spoke in a perfectly reasonable tone, as if she were addressing a pair of particularly slow five-year-olds.

“Don’t you two know anything?” she said. “The Doctor lies. Always. That’s Rule One.”

Coulson shot a questioning glance at Clint, who just shrugged a bit helplessly.

“No one’s lying,” Coulson said, matching reasonable tone for reasonable tone. He rested his hand on River’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze through the many layers of blankets. “The doctor just wants you to feel better, that’s all.”

“That’s when he lies the worst,” River said. Then she curled a little more tightly into herself, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

The next day, when they were ready to check her out of the hospital, she claimed she had no memory of any of it.

So, no. River Song wasn’t wild about doctors.

*****

_August 2007_  
 _One year, eleven months after River Song’s recruitment_  


One of the nice things about River, Coulson reflected, was that she never complained about having to dress up for a mission.

Unlike certain other people. 

Coulson looked over the top of his laptop at Clint, who was pacing around on the other side of the hotel suite’s sitting room. Clint was fussing and fidgeting like a four-year-old on family picture day, and he hadn’t even gotten his bow tie and tuxedo jacket on yet.

“Get it out of your system now,” Coulson said, trying hard not to look amused. “You’re going to have to look the part by nine o’clock.”

The part of Gregory Blake, an American businessman affiliated with Stark Industries attending the charity event for Great Ormond Street Hospital that was set to kick off in the ballroom downstairs. They were in London, gathering intel on an arms smuggling ring, and the man suspected of providing the financial backing, Tom Lambert, was apparently a very large donor.

“Yeah, I know,” Clint grumbled, swinging his arms back and forth, testing his mobility in the shirt. “I’m just hoping there’s no trouble. I don’t know how anyone is supposed to fight in one of these damn things.”

“If James Bond can manage, I’m sure you’ll find a way.” Coulson brought the comm system online, starting the diagnostic to run to make sure everything was in proper working order. “But the odds of anything getting violent tonight are low. River just needs to get Lambert talking and you need to back her up and give credence to her cover.”

Coulson had no doubt but that Clint would be fine. As twitchy and uncomfortable as he might be beforehand, once Clint was out on the job, he would fall into the role easily enough. Clint might be in his element working from a distance, but a combination of instinct and training made him pretty formidable up close, too.

The door on the other side of the room opened and River (aka Mrs. Juliana Blake) stepped out. 

River was the antithesis of Clint when it came to forays into formal wear. For all that she was an eminently practical person (disturbingly so for a twenty-year-old at times) River approached such occasions with the delight of a kid playing dress-up.

Tonight’s dress was gold with a skirt slit up the thigh and a bodice that was fitted in a way that left just enough to the imagination. Coulson knew that there would be at least three weapons hidden under it, too. Apparently the outfit hadn’t been invented that River Song couldn’t wear while armed.

“Almost ready,” she said. “How are we doing on time?”

“Over an hour. You’re fine,” Coulson said.

“Good. Clint, could you help me with…? Thanks,” she said, as Clint paused in his circuit around the room to zip up the back of her dress.

Coulson was pretty sure he saw Clint swallow uncomfortably hard as he did so. Just as he was fairly sure he saw River blush a bit. He kept his face expressionless as he pretended to watch the diagnostic finish running itself. As good as it had been to watch Clint and River learn to work as partners and settle into being friends, lately those two had begun to dance around each other in a very different way.

“Let me go get my hair in order,” River said, heading back into her room. “And then we’ll practice some more,” she added over her shoulder to Clint.

Clint groaned. “Do we have to?”

“Yes!” River called back through her open bedroom door.

Clint shook his head and surrendered to the inevitability of the jacket and bow tie.

River was back a few minutes later, hair loosely pinned back with some small jeweled clips. She went to her own laptop, set up on the sideboard, and tapped a couple of keys. A waltz began to play through the small speakers.

“Come on,” she said, holding out her hand to Clint. “Remember, relax. It’s just three beats. A box step. Step-side-close, step-side-close. You lead this time.”

Clint took her hand, resting his other hand on her back with a carefully schooled expression as he began to slowly waltz her around the room. River stopped him several times to correct his steps or adjust his frame.

No doubt about it. Clint was kind of hopeless when it came to ballroom dance.

Which begged the question, Coulson thought, of how on earth River had gotten so good at it.

*****

_July 2008_  
 _Two years, ten months after River Song’s recruitment_  


The mission in Harper Creek, North Carolina was surreal, even for them. It wasn’t their usual fare; not an intelligence gathering mission or a hit. 

It was a rescue. 

Six-year-old Ava Ramirez was being held in a house on a run-down, defunct horse farm outside of the small coastal town. Her kidnapping had been orchestrated by an up-and-coming terrorist group. They had snatched the girl right out of her bedroom in the family’s upper-class neighborhood in Dallas. She was being used as inducement to encourage her father, a software security expert, to get them access to some of SHIELD’s more sensitive databases.

SHIELD infiltrated the farmhouse and pulled her out in the middle of the night in the teeth of Hurricane Dorothy. 

At first they had feared that the approaching storm would compromise the whole mission. As it turned out, it worked to their advantage, adding additional cover and confusion. River went in after the girl, covered by Coulson and Clint. Then once the target was safely clear, the second team moved in, under Coulson’s direction to secure the site and the kidnappers. River had left three of the four men alive, and they would be answering questions for weeks to come. Coulson and Clint handed the scene over to Agent Hill and hiked through the blowing rain over the hill to the old cinderblock barn that had served as their staging area.

River, as laid out by the extraction plan, had carried Ava straight back to the barn, settling in with the child in the safest section, a large stall in the middle. They had been concerned about what kind of condition they’d find the girl in after almost a week of captivity, but to their relief Ava looked unharmed, if unlikely to turn loose of her rescuer any time soon.

And she wanted absolutely nothing to do with either Coulson or Clint. When they turned up in the barn, Ava took one look at them, let out a panicked whimper, and buried her face in River’s shoulder. Not that you could blame the kid, Clint thought. If he’d been kidnapped by the guys who were currently under the tender mercies of Agent Hill, he’d be scared of a pair of strange, disheveled men in black uniforms and Kevlar, too.

Clint and Coulson removed what protective gear they could. With the situation back at the house secure, there was no need of it and it was marginally more comfortable to just be stuck in soaked clothes and not soaked clothes under bullet-proof vests. Beyond that there was little they could do. 

They settled onto the floor of the stall, keeping as much distance as they reasonably could. River sat against the opposite wall with the Ava in her lap. River had wrapped the girl in a mylar blanket to keep her as warm as possible in spite of drenched clothing. Now that they didn’t have to worry about being spotted, Coulson turned on a camp lantern creating a little cave of light in the old barn. The wind from the back side of the hurricane howled overhead, but here they were reasonably secure. They just had to sit tight until morning. Then they could get back to their safe house and start making arrangements to get Ava back to her parents in Texas.

It was a long time before Ava turned her head away from of River’s shoulder enough to look at the other two agents. The whole while, River kept up a stream of quiet, soothing prattle about not much of anything. Which was funny, in a way. River never talked so much. Eventually, Clint grew tired of trying to listen for phantom threats over the sound of the wind and rain outside and actually tuned in to what she was talking about.

“I always loved to listen to storms in the night when I was a kid,” she said. “They’d blow in off the sea and right over top of our house. It was a very old house. You know what’s funny? It was a castle, really. That’s strange to think about, isn’t it? Living in a castle? Not the kind that you’re probably thinking of, though. Nothing fancy. It was so old that parts of it had fallen down. We had a bathtub in the kitchen because that was the only place the water ever got hot. We had curtains hung up around it so it was like taking a bath in a tent. The electricity only worked on the first floor. I had a torch and a lamp for my bedroom upstairs. And the roof liked to leak. We used to say that it let in more rain than it kept out. But the walls were a different story. They were made out of stone, and they were as thick as I was tall in some places. The wind could never get through, no matter how hard it was blowing.”

River’s voice had taken on the Scots cadence that she, only occasionally and only in private, had allowed to start creeping back into her speech again. At other times, it usually only ever came out when she was excessively tired or extremely angry. 

Or, apparently, talking about castles by the sea.

Clint listened, wondering how much, if any of it, was true. He’d learned a lot about River over the course of almost three years, more than he’d ever thought he would in the beginning. They were friends, and for the last several months they’d been waking up in each others’ beds as often as not. 

But there was still so much about his partner that he didn’t know.

Ava remained silently curled up against River’s chest, her head tucked under the woman’s chin. But she was listening. She had a bit of River’s wet shirt pinched between her fingers and was rubbing her thumb against the material in a way that Clint could vaguely remember doing with an old blanket a very, very long time ago. He blinked a bit and shook his head. He hadn’t known he’d even remembered that.

The movement caught River’s attention, her eyes cutting over to him and Coulson as if she’d forgotten that anyone but the little girl might be listening. But she didn’t miss a beat.

“Now when Clint was a kid, he traveled with a circus. Can you believe that? A real circus with lions and elephants and acrobats.”

Ava adjusted her head slightly so that she could see Clint. She still looked very solemn, but not scared, as if she thought that living with elephants might mean that he had some redeeming qualities after all.

“He has some good stories, but he should tell you those. He tells them better.”

She looked at him tiredly over Ava’s head. _Help me out here?_

It was a request he could never refuse.

“Um…yeah.” 

Clint wasn’t exactly given to spinning long yarns about his days with Carson’s Carnival, and wasn’t really sure where to start. Especially when he was trying not to warp a first grader for life.

“Well, there was this one time,” he said. “We were set up in a little town in Missouri in a big field by the local high school. And one day while we were there—I guess just because it was a nice day—a couple of the elephants decided they wanted to go exploring…”

He was part way through a half-fabricated story about the adventures of Queenie and Sheba when Ava finally dropped off to sleep.

When dawn came, they were able to pick their way back to their safe house. In due course, SHIELD sent a helicopter to fly them to an airport outside of the worst of the storm-damaged areas. The jet flew them to Dallas where Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez met them on the tarmac. If they’d thought that Ava had been keeping a tight hold on River, it was nothing compared to the way the girl latched onto her mother as soon as she was within hugging distance.

Tired, but satisfied, the three SHIELD agents walked back to the jet for the trip back to New York. Clint fell into step beside River, arm lightly brushing hers, as had become their habit.

“Did you really live in an old castle?” he asked.

She gave him a sidelong look with a bit of a smile.

“Did you really chase an elephant through a high school football game?” she countered.

Clint smiled and shook his head as he followed her aboard the jet.

*****

_March 2009_  
 _Three years, six months after River Song’s recruitment_  


Edmund Beard was a bad, bad man.

He was also, at least outwardly, an upstanding member of Kansas City society. Wealthy businessman. Pillar of the Community. Patron of the Arts. Good Christian. SHIELD knew, going in, that he was going to be a hard one to get close to. He had no patience for young upstarts, and he wasn’t going to fall for a honey trap.

There was a very specific sort of person that Beard respected. Male. Preferably white. Not a day under forty. Wealthy and successful with the outward trappings of wealth and success. That was what they needed to get an agent in and get him talking.

That was how Phil Coulson found himself preparing to go under cover as Jonathan Blackhurst, investment banker turned entrepreneur, visiting the area with an eye toward moving to the city. Clint, posing as Blackhurst’s personal assistant, would be manning the base at the hotel.

Coulson would be attending Sunday morning service at Redeemer Episcopal Church with River, who was posing as Ashleigh Whitmore.

Jonathan’s much, _much_ younger fiancée.

Clint had just about killed himself laughing.

“You are no help, whatsoever,” Coulson told him, pacing back through their hotel suite, looking for his watch. 

“Clint, stop teasing him,” River said, fastening a strand of pearls around her neck. Out of the corner of his eye, Coulson saw Clint take strategic advantage of the fact that both of her hands were occupied and pull her into his lap.

“So, be honest,” Clint said. “You’re marrying this Blackhurst dude for his money, right?”

“Hey. He has lots of good qualities,” River replied with a grin. “Too bad it will all go to hell when it comes out that I’m sleeping with his personal assistant.” She leaned in and kissed him.

Coulson shook his head. Not that he wasn’t happy for them, but dear God had they gotten demonstrative since the debacle of a training conference in England back in December. At least in private. On one hand, Coulson was flattered that they considered him “in private.” On the other hand, he’d started to seriously consider carrying a bucket of cold water around with him.

“Cool it, guys. River, we need to be in the car in five minutes,” Coulson said on his way past them. He’d left his watch in the bathroom.

“Take good care of him,” he heard Clint say, more seriously.

Coulson glanced back to see River nod and rest her forehead briefly against Clint’s.

“Always,” she replied.

Coulson and River parked a block away from the church on a tree-lined street and took their time strolling along, to all appearances looking over the neighborhood. Phil was wearing a suit that easily cost twice his monthly salary. River was in a demure flowered dress and a lavender sweater. She had her left hand threaded through his elbow, the better to let people see the impressive engagement ring SHIELD had provided for the mission. 

It was a real diamond. Beard would know a fake. It had come with a post-it with _DON’T LOSE IT!_ scribbled in the quartermaster’s handwriting.

Phil glanced over at River, and couldn’t help the low, unhappy sound that sighed out of him.

“What’s wrong?” River asked mildly.

“I feel like a creepy old man,” Phil grumbled.

River snorted back a laugh, but patted his arm sympathetically. 

“Well, don’t,” she said. “You are neither old nor creepy. And besides, it’s not like anyone is going to expect us to make out. It’s church. It’s relaxing. We’ll go, we’ll sing, we’ll listen to a sermon that will go on ten minutes longer than it needs to. We’ll make small talk over coffee and cookies and we’ll leave.”

She was right, of course. Phil hadn’t been to a church in years, but he managed to fake his way through. River actually seemed more at ease than he did, singing along to the hymns without stumbling over words, and turning unerringly to the correct pages in the prayer book. And the ruse worked amazingly well. Edmund Beard came over and introduced himself during the coffee hour, and insisted on giving them the tour of the newly renovated sanctuary. (He was on the vestry.)

“Lovely place for a wedding. When are you two tying the knot?” he asked, apparently impressed at Jonathan Blackhurst’s ability to land such a pretty and charming young trophy wife.

River let the two men do most of the talking while she looked at statuary and stained glass windows, or rubbed a hand across the back of a pew with a small smile that seemed almost nostalgic. By the time they left, Coulson had an invitation to meet Beard at his club on Tuesday to discuss some good prospective business interests in the city.

“See? “ River said as they walked back to the car. “That wasn’t bad at all.”

“No. And if the meeting at the club plays out, we should have all the information we need to close in.” They walked along in silence for a few moments before Coulson added, “I never would have figured you for looking so at home in a church.”

He had never known her to attend any sort of service. On her SHIELD paperwork, the box under _Religious Affiliation_ was left blank.

One of the first things she’d ever said to him was that she didn’t believe. In anything.

River just shrugged lightly.

“I was raised by a priest,” she said. “I think it’s just something that sticks with you.”

*****

_April 2009_  
 _Three years, seven months after River Song’s recruitment_  


They stood there for a long time after the blue police box—the TARDIS—vanished into thin air, trying to come to terms with what they had just experienced.

Well, Clint and Coulson were.

River, Clint was sure, was way ahead of them in that respect.

She was standing between them, but far enough back, he noted with a worried frown, that she was out of reach. Her arms were tensely folded, her face was set and expressionless, and she wouldn’t look at either him or Coulson.

“River?” Clint asked.

It seemed that he didn’t need to ask anything beyond that. River took a deep breath. 

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she said, still looking at the place where the TARDIS, and those aboard, had disappeared.

“Will you tell us?” Coulson asked.

They were both surprised at how quickly she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s time you knew.”


End file.
